Sorry for the slow blogging pace this morning, but I’ve become ensnared in Jonathan Chait’s vast piece on race and politics (which I’ll post about shortly), which requires more than a cursory reading.

Here are some less complex midday news/views items:

* Vox explains itself in a launch–or arguably relaunch–essay.

* MoJo’s David Corn unearths a 2009 Rand Paul video in which the Kentuckian seems to accuse Dick Cheney of taking America to war to benefit Halliburton.

* In what may be political version of a Freudian slip, Scott Brown forget to identify himself as a Republican in filing for the Senate in NH.

* Brendan Eich could have probably done without a defense from Donald Trump.

* New surveys show Arkansas and Florida gubernatorial contests as dead heats.

And in non-political news:

* Boulder again “least obese” American city; tri-state Appalachian area most obese.

As we break for lunch, here’s Sister Rosetta Tharpe with her best-known song, “Up Above My Head.”

Ed Kilgore

Ed Kilgore is a political columnist for New York and managing editor at the Democratic Strategist website. He was a contributing writer at the Washington Monthly from January 2012 until November 2015, and was the principal contributor to the Political Animal blog.